It seem that politicians are the problems in everything human society. Maybe ban politicking, we end wars, end corruption, end hatred among races and religions and end …
Yes, it’s true that we don’t need politicians in human society. After all, humans, and human society, have been around many hundreds of thousands of years longer than politicians and governments have. However, simply banning politics outright is a bit too simplistic a solution. For one thing, politicians aren’t the cause of wars, corruption, and racial hatred, though in present society all four share many raisons d’être. For another, if you want to preserve those aspects of current human society that are desirable (modern agriculture, technology, the communications and transport infrastructure, etc.), then you’re going to have to have something in mind for an alternative method of administering things.
I should add that there is no one answer to this question that everyone here is going to agree upon. A better venue for this discussion might be the Great Debates forum.
I’m right with you the minute you sort out a definition of politicking that separates the good from bad.
That’s hardly true - humanity has had politicians as long as it’s existed, and probably before that. Hell, *chimpanzees *have politicians. So long as primates form groups, there will always be a need for individuals to lead and organize these groups.
Exactly. As soon as you have two people, you’ve got conflict. Once you have three people, you’ve got factions. By the time you get more than 100 people, you can’t even have a pure democracy and wind up with some kind of representational government (at best). (The 100 person number was the assertion of some sociologist according to a textbook I remember form high school).
People want things done, but they don’t necessarily want to do (and are not necessarily able or equipped to do) their equal share of every single job that needs doing, neither would it be effective to try doing that (imagine if you had to spend a small portion of your time building roads, policing an international border, or cleaning up litter from a public place).
So there arises some administrative entity to make that happen, and within that administrative entity, there arises some structure of leadership, etc.
Other models are theoretically possible to impose (which is part of the reason people argue about politics), but the one that usually arises on its own is the one we have.
OP: without politicians, how do you propose that things will get done? - who will organise the building of roads, hospitals, schools? Who will decide how much money to spend on those things? Who will organise collection of funds to make them possible?
(There are other ways of doing the above, different from what we currently have, however, they all need to be organised somehow)
I’d say you’re stretching the definition of “politician” a bit far. And while I can’t speak for chimpanzees, it is demonstrably false that there is always a need for human groups to have leaders; there exist many groups, formally constituted and otherwise, which have formed themselves upon fully democratic lines without leaders, from imprompu gatherings of a few friends to small hobbyist clubs to large religious or political organizations.
Moving this from General Questions to Great Debates.
samclem, Moderator–GQ
Dunbar’s Number. Although some estimates are higher. The basic idea, as it relates to the question of organizing a society is that we as primates have a natural upper limit to the size of the society our unaided brains can handle. Which is large by the standard of apes, but tiny by the standard of most societies. Above that number we start to loose track and everything falls apart; historical examples being anarchic communes that either fell apart or grew a government as soon as they grew above 200-300 people. Anything small enough can function without a government ( although even then, you will still have what can loosely termed as “politicians”; they would be the most persuasive people ).
Governments, even simple chieftain-and-followers government are artificial arrangements to get around that number in various ways. Which is why governments and societies ruled by them can grow enormous and still function just fine, and anarchies can’t.
I think the answer to the OP is that, human society being what it is, if you got rid of all the politicians, new politicians would appear to take their place (because, actually, it a job that needs doing). Very likely the new politicians would be the people who led the movement to get rid of the old ones (its called a revolution). Actually, just by trying to get rid of the original politicians the leaders of the movement to get rid of them become politicians. The trouble is, there is no guarantee that your new set of politicians will be better than the lot you got rid of, and history suggests that they are more likely than not to be distinctly worse.
Who has the power to ban politicking? Only a very powerful politician. (That is called dictatorship.)
People need a way to steal from each other without getting their own hands dirty . . . and without any feelings of guilt or accountability.
Ah, the right wing bashing of all responsibility as “theft”.
No; it is NOT theft for people to pay for the protections and benefits of belonging to an organized society. It is the people who call it “theft” and claim no responsibility to others who are stealing.
It seems to me that much more of human suffering is a result of scarcity, rather than politics. Why is it that things must be scarce? We should ban economists and get rid of scarcity forever.
In a democratic society people have competing interests. Politics is how we resolve these disagreements without resorting to violence. It’s not a bug, it a feature.
Politics is the natural state of humanity. Try leading a raid group in Warcraft or something.
Politicians squabble with each other and try to outmaneuver one another because that’s the only non-physical way to duke out opposing ideas in society.
Exactly. There’s Clausewitz’ famous line “War is a mere continuation of politics by other means.” Well, it’s true. If you didn’t have politics pretty much every interaction would be a fight. Politics is the means by which we sometimes agree to work together instead of fighting.
N.B.: There is no such thing as an anti-politician. If you try to bring about what you are describing, then you are engaging in politics yourself.
Do you really think there is no politics in Stone Age societies?
And even if you could make a case for that, the fact remains that most humans can’t live the Stone Age way any more. There are too many of us. We require more highly organized modes of food production, and any such above the level of the most primitive agriculture requires organized government.
Can you give me examples of groups that have accomplished anything without leaders or organizers?